Weighted Down
Chapter Two: Morning
Disclaimer: all characters belong to the ever wonderful JKR, who better hurry with #5, or she's going to loose serious ground to fanfictions everywhere, but anyways, on with the story.
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Harry got breakfast quickly, ignoring his cousin, who sat at the kitchen table eating leftover pancakes from a box that had been in the freezer. The Dursleys had finally realized that real food was needed in the house, because his aunt and uncle couldn't function on a diet like Dudley's. Uncle Vernon had also complained loudly that he didn't need it, and a huge row had erupted, with his Uncle the victor.
Harry stayed out of these affairs. He knew that if he always got up early enough, he could find some food in the house, and he usually did.
So this particular morning was no different. Harry found some whole-wheat cereal in the cupboard and the carton of milk and made himself a bowl. He debated whether to sit at the table and eat with his cousin or go up to his room and eat, but his answer came when Dudley heaved himself off his chair and walked back up the stairs, leaving his mess at the table. Harry shook his head.
He sat down, trying to eat without thinking. It was always easier to become automatic when things happened, he had found, and with the past few week's occurrences, Harry tried very hard not to think too much. It brought too much pain, and that was the last thing he wanted right now.
His non-thoughts were interrupted when a large tawny owl fluttered through an open window in the kitchen. It carried a paper tied to its leg, and Harry sighed. He'd been subscribed to the Daily Profit since the summer after fourth year, sick of finding out information from others about the wizarding world.
The owl dropped the paper in front of Harry, and waited patiently while the boy dug through his pockets to find some change to give it. When it was satisfied, it took off again through the window, and Harry was left sitting and staring at his rolled up paper. He wasn't sure if he wanted to read it.
The Profit had done a brief article on the train crash back from Hogwarts, and the Death Eaters' appearance, but it had not gone into detail. Harry didn't know what the rest of the wizarding world thought about the tragedy, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know.
As he opened July 30th's paper, Harry gasped. Here it was: they had finally gotten real wind of what had happened. He stared at the pictures, the ministry wizards moving around the ruble that had been a train, trying to find survivors. Most students had fled out the windows, but some had not been so lucky. Another picture held the current Minister of Magic, Darius Zoroaster, the previous head of the Unspeakables Department, giving a statement.
The last picture was what made Harry shudder. It was a picture of the Great Hall of Hogwarts, completely covered in black cloth. It looked like it had on the last day of term in Harry's fourth year, when Dumbledore had claimed mourning for Cedric Diggory. He could make out the teachers seated at the staff table in a horrible state.
Professor McGonagall seemed to be yelling at whoever had taken the picture, because though Harry could not hear her, he knew that face. Professor Snape glared up at him, looking furious and sad at the same time. The teachers at the staff table sat silently, most staring at that one empty chair.
It will always be empty now, thought Harry morosely. He didn't feel like reading the rest of the article. It was already clear that the whole of the wizarding world now knew that the greatest Wizard ever alive was gone forever. He folded up the paper, and took it back to his room. As he climbed the stairs, he could hear his aunt and uncle start to stir, and hurried to get inside his own small room before they found something to yell at him for.
When he entered his room, he barely had time to register a small ball of fluff zinging around his room when he was hit smack in the head by it. As he raised his head, rubbing the spot the small owl had hit, he couldn't help but smile.
"Pig, don't you ever settle down?" he asked the over-hyper minute owl that was still fluttering around the ceiling fan. Ron's small pet had not changed much in the years. Harry laughed, before ordering the bird down so that he could catch the note that was folded and tied to it's leg. When he finally caught Pig and got his letter, the owl hooted happily, and went to bother Hedwig, who was staring indignantly out of her cage. Harry ignored the owls and looked at his letter.
Harry,
I know you probably don't want to talk right now, but mum told me to tell you that you're always welcome at the Burrow. Hermione's here now, and we were wondering if you might want to join us. Do you still need permission? I don't know, but you can come if you want, it's up to you. Well, we've enclosed your birthday presents with the package, but your not open them until tomorrow! Have a happy summer, and send your reply with Pig.
Ron
PS. Hiya Harry! This is Herm here, Ron wouldn't let me write, but I stole the letter from him. Anyways, I hope you're doing alright. Just remember Harry, all of this really was not your fault, and I hope that you don't blame yourself. Keep your head up, and everything will turn out fine. It always does.
Lots of love,
Hermione
Harry sighed after reading the letter. His friends knew him too well. He wondered for a moment about the package Ron had mentioned, but a hoot from his window made him turn.
There was another owl, this one a large eagle owl, which had just landed on his windowsill with a large package attached to his leg. It was Hermione's owl, Babylon. Harry laughed, assuming that Pig had flown too fast for this poor one to keep up. He went to the windowsill and relieved the owl of his burden.
It was oddly shaped, with points sticking out at peculiar angles. It was wrapped in plain brown paper, with Harry scrawled in Ron's messy handwriting on the top. In Hermione's neat script, Harry could read Happy Birthday on a side.
Harry was glad that he had friends that still accepted him. He was also happy that they had not just sent gifts, but the letter also. It gave him a warm, fuzzy feeling to think that Ron and Hermione still wanted to talk to him, even after all that had happened.
He set aside the package, obediently waiting until tomorrow to open it. But now, what would he do with the rest of the day?
He sighed, and got out his parchment and quill, and A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot. He had a very nasty (two foot long) essay for Professor Binns to finish on the goblin wars of the fifteenth century. It was one of the last homework assignments that had yet to be finished. Harry had spent much time on his holiday assignments, in hopes of diverting his attention from thoughts about the accident. It didn't work very well.
But Harry sat down at his desk, nonetheless, and began to compose his essay. The goblin wars were quite complicated, and he was soon immersed in his textbook, looking for information and trying to summarize the words without sounding like he was copying.
When he was finished the parchment was almost two and a half feet long, and it was late in the morning. Harry sat back, happy with himself. He had wasted a whole morning on schoolwork, without thinking too much on the Wizarding World's crises.
But now that his brain was unoccupied, thoughts rushed back to him. Images, and sounds he wanted nothing else than to be rid of. With a disgusted sigh, Harry shoved his chair away form his desk and headed out of his room and downstairs. He needed a few chores to do, and Aunt Petunia was always good at finding him work.
An hour later, Harry could be found in the back garden, pulling weeds out of his aunt's petunias. She seemed to like those flowers for some reason, and had planted them throughout most of the back yard, and some of the front.
Harry worked endlessly, pulling some nasty looking weeds with thorns, and a few patches of really annoying grass that had spread throughout the dirt. Why would anyone in their right minds want to keep a garden this neat and orderly? Harry asked himself, yanking hard on more grassy stuff.
Its better than de-gnoming, isn't it? another part asked. Harry laughed slightly. He remembered vividly that last time he and Ron and his brothers had tried to de-gnome the garden at the Burrow. Picking weeds was defiantly better than getting your finger half bitten off by a dizzy little furry creature. With that in mind, he returned to the task of de-weeding his aunt's back yard, and got lost in his own memories of a simpler life than the one he led now.
By the time the garden had been de-weeded, as Harry had come to calling it, and looking orderly and fresh again, it was near dusk, and he had worked up a sweat. He felt sticky, and slightly gross in dirty jeans and his now disgusting green shirt. Oh well, he thought. He'd just wash it when Aunt Petunia was out.
He had a very even tan, from hours spent at Ron's playing Quidditch in the summer heat. He looked exceptionally different from the gangly, slightly nerdy, (though he would never admit it) eleven-year-old he had been one time. His arms and chest were muscled enough that he could pull weeds with ease, but he didn't think he could win any matches, especially against Ron. Ron had become quite the cheeky dude, and Harry had overheard some of the girls in other years at Hogwarts giggle and call Ronald a 'dish'. The thought had made Harry almost die laughing at the time.
He had also grown every summer since his fourth year. Currently he was five foot eleven, and, while he was no where near Ron, (Six foot three! The tallest of the Weasley lot) he was taller than most of the boys, and girls, in his year. Hermione complained now that she had to break her neck to look at both of them. The poor girl had stopped growing at five three. Harry and Ron teased her relentlessly about her height, among many other things.
Harry laughed gently at his train of thoughts, and trudged back into the house, prepared to take a shower, and find something to entertain his mind until his relatives went to sleep, and he could sneak downstairs and find some food that Dudley hadn't wolfed down. The Dursleys never seemed to notice that their food disappeared very fast in the summer, but Harry assumed they thought it was their poor, ickle, Dudleykins, only getting a few snacks now and again.
Harry walked in the backdoor from the garden, careful not to get any of the dirt and sweat that clung to him on his aunt's clean floor. She was always angry when he got dirt, or anything for that matter, on things that she had recently cleaned. Harry was just glad that she never cleaned his room. She would go nuts with all the stuff he had up there from day to day.
As he trudged up the stairs, thinking longingly of the shower, and getting the stickiness off of everything, he noticed how quiet the house seemed. Indeed, it sounded as if no one was home. His aunt was usually listening to the radio while she cleaned, and Dudley either had the TV or the Nintendo on high all the time.
But both of those sounds were missing at the moment, and Harry wondered idly why. He wasn't complaining; without the Dursleys here he could get what he wanted from the kitchen, take as long as he wanted in the shower, and perhaps, if he was lucky, even get to watch something on TV for once this summer. It sounded promising, but he was still wondering where they were.
His questions were answered when he arrived at his door. A small note, in his aunt's scrawny handwriting said that she and Dudley had gone out, and would be back by after supper. He smiled. This wouldn't be so bad after all.
A few hours later found Harry sitting in front of the living room's TV, very clean and his stomach full, laughing at a sitcom on the tele. It was about this weird muggle family, who tried to do things together, and always ended up having a fight, or breaking something, but managed to always fix any situation in the one half hour that the show lasted. Harry, having not had many opportunities to watch television of any kind as a child, found it hilarious.
He was just getting ready to shut off the TV, when he suddenly heard distinct voices from the front of the house. He stopped, letting the commercial's blaring comments cover his footsteps to the front door. The voices were defiantly there, and Harry quickly pulled out his wand, spells of banishing and defense already swarming to the front of his mind. He crouched behind the front door, listening intently.
The voices seemed rushed- panicked almost -about something. He tried to hear the words, but there were too many different voices out there to get anything clear. As many as their seemed to be on the other side of the door, Harry couldn't help but feel that he knew, or should know, some of those voices. That frightened him more than anything, and he got ready to blast the door to surprise any attackers first before he distinctly heard a now very familiar voice shout,
"OH, SOD OFF IT! Harry!" was heard, accompanied by banging on the door.
Harry sagged for a moment, realizing who it was, before unlocking the door with a flourish, and throwing it open.
A small portion of the Weasley family stood on his front porch, flaming red hair covered in hats, all dressed in muggle clothing, surprisingly well, on Mr. Weasley's part, Harry noted.
But that wasn't the issue at the moment.
"What are you all doing here?" Harry asked quickly, before Ron could take his hand down from where he had been pounding on the door, looking sheepish.
But Mr. Weasley seemed to have more pressing matters on his mind than small talk, and Harry noted as he started forward that all of the children present, Ron, Ginny, and the twins, had similar looks of misery and an urgency just contained.
"There's no time to talk, Harry," Mr. Weasley said quickly, drawing Harry out of the house. "We need you to some with us, quickly."
"Wait, what about the Dursleys? And what is this about?" Harry was starting to get worried. What if this was some trick. Instincts told him to be careful.
"Harry," Ginny said seriously, all traces of the usual fun and cheerfulness Harry saw in her beautiful face gone. Harry knew something was very wrong. Ginny's normal twinkling eyes that Harry had always loved about her were grave.
"It's about Hermione, and its bad."
Chapter Two: Morning
Disclaimer: all characters belong to the ever wonderful JKR, who better hurry with #5, or she's going to loose serious ground to fanfictions everywhere, but anyways, on with the story.
Oo00ooOOoo00ooOOoo00ooOOoo00ooOOoo
Harry got breakfast quickly, ignoring his cousin, who sat at the kitchen table eating leftover pancakes from a box that had been in the freezer. The Dursleys had finally realized that real food was needed in the house, because his aunt and uncle couldn't function on a diet like Dudley's. Uncle Vernon had also complained loudly that he didn't need it, and a huge row had erupted, with his Uncle the victor.
Harry stayed out of these affairs. He knew that if he always got up early enough, he could find some food in the house, and he usually did.
So this particular morning was no different. Harry found some whole-wheat cereal in the cupboard and the carton of milk and made himself a bowl. He debated whether to sit at the table and eat with his cousin or go up to his room and eat, but his answer came when Dudley heaved himself off his chair and walked back up the stairs, leaving his mess at the table. Harry shook his head.
He sat down, trying to eat without thinking. It was always easier to become automatic when things happened, he had found, and with the past few week's occurrences, Harry tried very hard not to think too much. It brought too much pain, and that was the last thing he wanted right now.
His non-thoughts were interrupted when a large tawny owl fluttered through an open window in the kitchen. It carried a paper tied to its leg, and Harry sighed. He'd been subscribed to the Daily Profit since the summer after fourth year, sick of finding out information from others about the wizarding world.
The owl dropped the paper in front of Harry, and waited patiently while the boy dug through his pockets to find some change to give it. When it was satisfied, it took off again through the window, and Harry was left sitting and staring at his rolled up paper. He wasn't sure if he wanted to read it.
The Profit had done a brief article on the train crash back from Hogwarts, and the Death Eaters' appearance, but it had not gone into detail. Harry didn't know what the rest of the wizarding world thought about the tragedy, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know.
As he opened July 30th's paper, Harry gasped. Here it was: they had finally gotten real wind of what had happened. He stared at the pictures, the ministry wizards moving around the ruble that had been a train, trying to find survivors. Most students had fled out the windows, but some had not been so lucky. Another picture held the current Minister of Magic, Darius Zoroaster, the previous head of the Unspeakables Department, giving a statement.
The last picture was what made Harry shudder. It was a picture of the Great Hall of Hogwarts, completely covered in black cloth. It looked like it had on the last day of term in Harry's fourth year, when Dumbledore had claimed mourning for Cedric Diggory. He could make out the teachers seated at the staff table in a horrible state.
Professor McGonagall seemed to be yelling at whoever had taken the picture, because though Harry could not hear her, he knew that face. Professor Snape glared up at him, looking furious and sad at the same time. The teachers at the staff table sat silently, most staring at that one empty chair.
It will always be empty now, thought Harry morosely. He didn't feel like reading the rest of the article. It was already clear that the whole of the wizarding world now knew that the greatest Wizard ever alive was gone forever. He folded up the paper, and took it back to his room. As he climbed the stairs, he could hear his aunt and uncle start to stir, and hurried to get inside his own small room before they found something to yell at him for.
When he entered his room, he barely had time to register a small ball of fluff zinging around his room when he was hit smack in the head by it. As he raised his head, rubbing the spot the small owl had hit, he couldn't help but smile.
"Pig, don't you ever settle down?" he asked the over-hyper minute owl that was still fluttering around the ceiling fan. Ron's small pet had not changed much in the years. Harry laughed, before ordering the bird down so that he could catch the note that was folded and tied to it's leg. When he finally caught Pig and got his letter, the owl hooted happily, and went to bother Hedwig, who was staring indignantly out of her cage. Harry ignored the owls and looked at his letter.
Harry,
I know you probably don't want to talk right now, but mum told me to tell you that you're always welcome at the Burrow. Hermione's here now, and we were wondering if you might want to join us. Do you still need permission? I don't know, but you can come if you want, it's up to you. Well, we've enclosed your birthday presents with the package, but your not open them until tomorrow! Have a happy summer, and send your reply with Pig.
Ron
PS. Hiya Harry! This is Herm here, Ron wouldn't let me write, but I stole the letter from him. Anyways, I hope you're doing alright. Just remember Harry, all of this really was not your fault, and I hope that you don't blame yourself. Keep your head up, and everything will turn out fine. It always does.
Lots of love,
Hermione
Harry sighed after reading the letter. His friends knew him too well. He wondered for a moment about the package Ron had mentioned, but a hoot from his window made him turn.
There was another owl, this one a large eagle owl, which had just landed on his windowsill with a large package attached to his leg. It was Hermione's owl, Babylon. Harry laughed, assuming that Pig had flown too fast for this poor one to keep up. He went to the windowsill and relieved the owl of his burden.
It was oddly shaped, with points sticking out at peculiar angles. It was wrapped in plain brown paper, with Harry scrawled in Ron's messy handwriting on the top. In Hermione's neat script, Harry could read Happy Birthday on a side.
Harry was glad that he had friends that still accepted him. He was also happy that they had not just sent gifts, but the letter also. It gave him a warm, fuzzy feeling to think that Ron and Hermione still wanted to talk to him, even after all that had happened.
He set aside the package, obediently waiting until tomorrow to open it. But now, what would he do with the rest of the day?
He sighed, and got out his parchment and quill, and A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot. He had a very nasty (two foot long) essay for Professor Binns to finish on the goblin wars of the fifteenth century. It was one of the last homework assignments that had yet to be finished. Harry had spent much time on his holiday assignments, in hopes of diverting his attention from thoughts about the accident. It didn't work very well.
But Harry sat down at his desk, nonetheless, and began to compose his essay. The goblin wars were quite complicated, and he was soon immersed in his textbook, looking for information and trying to summarize the words without sounding like he was copying.
When he was finished the parchment was almost two and a half feet long, and it was late in the morning. Harry sat back, happy with himself. He had wasted a whole morning on schoolwork, without thinking too much on the Wizarding World's crises.
But now that his brain was unoccupied, thoughts rushed back to him. Images, and sounds he wanted nothing else than to be rid of. With a disgusted sigh, Harry shoved his chair away form his desk and headed out of his room and downstairs. He needed a few chores to do, and Aunt Petunia was always good at finding him work.
An hour later, Harry could be found in the back garden, pulling weeds out of his aunt's petunias. She seemed to like those flowers for some reason, and had planted them throughout most of the back yard, and some of the front.
Harry worked endlessly, pulling some nasty looking weeds with thorns, and a few patches of really annoying grass that had spread throughout the dirt. Why would anyone in their right minds want to keep a garden this neat and orderly? Harry asked himself, yanking hard on more grassy stuff.
Its better than de-gnoming, isn't it? another part asked. Harry laughed slightly. He remembered vividly that last time he and Ron and his brothers had tried to de-gnome the garden at the Burrow. Picking weeds was defiantly better than getting your finger half bitten off by a dizzy little furry creature. With that in mind, he returned to the task of de-weeding his aunt's back yard, and got lost in his own memories of a simpler life than the one he led now.
By the time the garden had been de-weeded, as Harry had come to calling it, and looking orderly and fresh again, it was near dusk, and he had worked up a sweat. He felt sticky, and slightly gross in dirty jeans and his now disgusting green shirt. Oh well, he thought. He'd just wash it when Aunt Petunia was out.
He had a very even tan, from hours spent at Ron's playing Quidditch in the summer heat. He looked exceptionally different from the gangly, slightly nerdy, (though he would never admit it) eleven-year-old he had been one time. His arms and chest were muscled enough that he could pull weeds with ease, but he didn't think he could win any matches, especially against Ron. Ron had become quite the cheeky dude, and Harry had overheard some of the girls in other years at Hogwarts giggle and call Ronald a 'dish'. The thought had made Harry almost die laughing at the time.
He had also grown every summer since his fourth year. Currently he was five foot eleven, and, while he was no where near Ron, (Six foot three! The tallest of the Weasley lot) he was taller than most of the boys, and girls, in his year. Hermione complained now that she had to break her neck to look at both of them. The poor girl had stopped growing at five three. Harry and Ron teased her relentlessly about her height, among many other things.
Harry laughed gently at his train of thoughts, and trudged back into the house, prepared to take a shower, and find something to entertain his mind until his relatives went to sleep, and he could sneak downstairs and find some food that Dudley hadn't wolfed down. The Dursleys never seemed to notice that their food disappeared very fast in the summer, but Harry assumed they thought it was their poor, ickle, Dudleykins, only getting a few snacks now and again.
Harry walked in the backdoor from the garden, careful not to get any of the dirt and sweat that clung to him on his aunt's clean floor. She was always angry when he got dirt, or anything for that matter, on things that she had recently cleaned. Harry was just glad that she never cleaned his room. She would go nuts with all the stuff he had up there from day to day.
As he trudged up the stairs, thinking longingly of the shower, and getting the stickiness off of everything, he noticed how quiet the house seemed. Indeed, it sounded as if no one was home. His aunt was usually listening to the radio while she cleaned, and Dudley either had the TV or the Nintendo on high all the time.
But both of those sounds were missing at the moment, and Harry wondered idly why. He wasn't complaining; without the Dursleys here he could get what he wanted from the kitchen, take as long as he wanted in the shower, and perhaps, if he was lucky, even get to watch something on TV for once this summer. It sounded promising, but he was still wondering where they were.
His questions were answered when he arrived at his door. A small note, in his aunt's scrawny handwriting said that she and Dudley had gone out, and would be back by after supper. He smiled. This wouldn't be so bad after all.
A few hours later found Harry sitting in front of the living room's TV, very clean and his stomach full, laughing at a sitcom on the tele. It was about this weird muggle family, who tried to do things together, and always ended up having a fight, or breaking something, but managed to always fix any situation in the one half hour that the show lasted. Harry, having not had many opportunities to watch television of any kind as a child, found it hilarious.
He was just getting ready to shut off the TV, when he suddenly heard distinct voices from the front of the house. He stopped, letting the commercial's blaring comments cover his footsteps to the front door. The voices were defiantly there, and Harry quickly pulled out his wand, spells of banishing and defense already swarming to the front of his mind. He crouched behind the front door, listening intently.
The voices seemed rushed- panicked almost -about something. He tried to hear the words, but there were too many different voices out there to get anything clear. As many as their seemed to be on the other side of the door, Harry couldn't help but feel that he knew, or should know, some of those voices. That frightened him more than anything, and he got ready to blast the door to surprise any attackers first before he distinctly heard a now very familiar voice shout,
"OH, SOD OFF IT! Harry!" was heard, accompanied by banging on the door.
Harry sagged for a moment, realizing who it was, before unlocking the door with a flourish, and throwing it open.
A small portion of the Weasley family stood on his front porch, flaming red hair covered in hats, all dressed in muggle clothing, surprisingly well, on Mr. Weasley's part, Harry noted.
But that wasn't the issue at the moment.
"What are you all doing here?" Harry asked quickly, before Ron could take his hand down from where he had been pounding on the door, looking sheepish.
But Mr. Weasley seemed to have more pressing matters on his mind than small talk, and Harry noted as he started forward that all of the children present, Ron, Ginny, and the twins, had similar looks of misery and an urgency just contained.
"There's no time to talk, Harry," Mr. Weasley said quickly, drawing Harry out of the house. "We need you to some with us, quickly."
"Wait, what about the Dursleys? And what is this about?" Harry was starting to get worried. What if this was some trick. Instincts told him to be careful.
"Harry," Ginny said seriously, all traces of the usual fun and cheerfulness Harry saw in her beautiful face gone. Harry knew something was very wrong. Ginny's normal twinkling eyes that Harry had always loved about her were grave.
"It's about Hermione, and its bad."